I have just finished prepping for tonight's class that starts at 9pm my time. As the workshop series is run out of Ardington in the UK it is their 10am Monday morning. Ardington is a sweet little English village with a pub, an old schoolhouse and a few scattered homes with gorgeous country gardens, hanging baskets and idle lanes. Truly beautiful, I know I have been there.
Staying in a village nearby Lipscombe Regis, we, Pam and I traveled to Ardington to this wonderful old schoolhouse to teach. Was that 2017? Welcomed by scones & chocolate biscuits and some wonderful English characters we settled into exploring the art deco movement in lettering.
It's not what I am doing now though. I am on and adventure with the German script artist Hermann Kilian. Presently I am finishing off my final class for the Ardington Academy with whom I have been teaching since May pretty well non-stop. Perfect from this distance in the middle of a pandemic. Interestingly enough the workshop series classes have been quite successful and very enjoyable except for the time of day.
These classes take a great deal of my energy and time. Preparing for zoom classes is quite different from teaching from the front of a classroom where you don't have to talk non-stop. You have time to pause, wend yourself around the classroom to give critiques of peoples work. Use you body language to approach and deliver some meaningful assistance and guidance to the student. In my zoom classes all my materials are a arms length. Papers labeled with that the exercise is and the order of the five or six exercises I am going to demonstrate in that time. I start with a coffee, I have one mid-class and am ready for another at the end. Exhausted. You try talking for two hours non-stop.
Anyway, I like my teaching but there will be a lot less of it next year so I can concentrate on some serious art, exhibit something worthwhile, research and write some articles. I don't think I know anyone who is not looking forward to twenty twenty-one!
